House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has stuck to the MAGA script as stubbornly as anyone on Capitol Hill throughout Trump’s second term. Even as Trump’s approval rating continues to plummet and his party looks increasingly likely to pay a steep political price as a result, Johnson has remained devout in his support, both rhetorically and legislatively, for even the most unpopular items of the president’s agenda.
However, while the House speaker has successfully resisted any urge to break from Trump, he now appears to have submitted to fatigue.
Johnson’s stated motivation for the recess casts even more doubt on the idea that he believes his party has anything to salvage from the midterms.
Johnson has long maintained his ability to hold a straight face while reciting generic MAGA talking points in the most ridiculous of circumstances. When the president accused Democratic veterans turned lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Johnson claimed Trump was merely “defining the crime of sedition.” After Trump shared an artificial intelligence video of himself dropping excrement on protesters, Johnson said the president was “using satire to make a point.”
And when all else fails, he claims ignorance of what the president or a GOP lawmaker did or said. Last year, for instance, he claimed he was too “busy” to have seen Trump’s alleged birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein.
On two occasions this week, however, Johnson faced questions from which he couldn’t hide behind his usual script. Left to his own wits, he visibly struggled.
The first came Sunday, when CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed the speaker on why he continued to support GOP candidate Brandon Herrera of Texas after Herrera not only made but later defended utterly abhorrent Holocaust jokes. Johnson could not feign ignorance or turn to touting the president’s record. While he did condemn Herrera’s jokes as “detestable,” he nonetheless downplayed them as just part of Herrera’s podcaster persona, asserting that the Texas candidate was on the “commonsense team of Republicans making life better for Americans.” And with that answer, Johnson revealed the despicable, humiliating depths to which he will stoop in order to boost the chances of a single Republican.
The best place for congressional Republicans to have made their case would have been on Capitol Hill, where residents of their districts sent them as representatives.
Then on Tuesday, reporter Eric Michael Garcia asked Johnson how Trump’s promise of $5,000 checks to Americans and his administration’s investment in various U.S. companies differed from communism. The only answer Johnson could muster was that Trump “comes up with creative ideas all the time,” adding, “we have a hard time keeping pace with it sometimes.” He neither used the defense he put forward days earlier for Herrera, nor even endorsed Trump’s ideas. Coming from someone with so much practice as a Trump apologist, this was a noteworthy change from his usual tone.
The most obvious sign of the speaker’s Trump fatigue, though, came Wednesday, when Johnson and the House GOP leadership decided to begin his chamber’s seven-week recess a day early, less than three weeks after its last extended break. Most notably, the decision postpones until after the midterms a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Johnson dismissed Massie’s motion as a “publicity stunt” and insisted that “it will immediately be tabled” when the House returns. But then why pass up the chance for the GOP majority to send voters a signal of confidence in the president’s Cabinet?
Johnson’s stated motivation for the recess casts even more doubt on the idea that he believes his party has anything to salvage from the midterms. Speaking to reporters, Johnson said, “It’s time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people.”
Needless to say, that time has come and gone. The best place for congressional Republicans to have made their case would have been on Capitol Hill, where residents of their districts sent them as representatives. Instead, GOP members of Congress aided an administration whose policies directly contributed to the very problems voters entrusted them to fix. As a result, prices continue to climb, in large part because the administration began a war most Americans (including a significant chunk of Republican voters) oppose. Many of the Epstein files are still not yet public. And AI’s rapid advancement continues with no government oversight despite warnings from a number of observers, including many of the sector’s biggest companies, of its potentially dangerous capabilities.
As his party looks increasingly likely to lose its hold of the House with each passing week, Johnson perhaps is finally realizing how little all his stooping for Trump ultimately accomplished for him, his party or his country. In truth, he ought to have learned that lesson a long time ago.
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